I entered law school because I had no idea what else to do with my liberal arts background. To my surprise, I developed a passion for public interest law; to my dismay, that area of the law is not particularly lucrative. Having attended college on a scholarship, I was ill-prepared for the penny-pinching that would mark my law school tenure and, in all likelihood, my future career. By May of next year I will be $120,000 in debt, and I expect to pull down between $40k and $50k a year. Fortunately, perhaps, I have no social life, and I live in a boring town with little to do but stay inside and read Wikipedia articles about 19th-century architects. So what’s a law student with a flexible schedule and limited budget to do but join Mechanical Turk? The money I’ve made so far is enough to pay for some pre-interview dry cleaning, if nothing else. And I have learned a great deal about areas previously unknown to me, like baby clothes sold on Amazon and the major publishers of fancy postcards. Now if only I could find a way to integrate “Experienced Mechanical Turk user” into my CV …
This is the memior of a klutz. A klutz who surrounds herself with other klutzes. It was the winter of 2006. I was a college freshman with a shiny new Macbook Pro, perfect for my major in Graphic Design. I loved that computer. Everything about it. And one day my roommate, and evil spawn of satan “Greta” decided to spill lemonade all over my laptop and not tell me. Needless to say, she bought me a new one. A brand new, shiny, MacBook Pro, the second one in my possession. It treated me well, got me through the good times and the bad. I think it became a part of me. Then, in the summer of 2009 there was a terrible accident. Wine was spilled all over the poor replacement and it was curtains for it. With the economy the way it is, I had to find some way to make money to fix it, right? Well after some research I stumbled upon Mechanical Turk. It was a godsend. Now I turk every day. It’s like an addiction. And I owe it all to being a klutz.
In the town where I live we have been hit hard by the recession. A lot of jobs have been taken away including mine. I want to get my wife the CD she has been looking for but unfortunately no store around here has it. What I have been trying to do is to earn enough money here on Mechanical Turk to but it for her from Amazon. I know it will take a while to do but in the end to see the look on her face it will all be worth it. My experience here so far has been very positive I am earning a good relationship with a couple of employers and starting to get ready to earn some bonuses. My qualifications are also growing quickly so I am opening up the door to more and more opportunities which will allow me to but this CD faster. If this proves successful for me I could look at continuing to do this to but more gifts for my relatives until I can get a steady job again when my schooling is done and I have a brand new career.
Show Me The Way To Go Home…. We’re broke right now – covering the bills and that’s about it. Nothing new there, then – a good proportion of the country is in the same situation, if not worse. However, my family lives overseas and my Mom is not well and cannot travel. Being able to earn a few bucks here and there online is a godsend. Every penny is going towards an airline ticket back to the Old Country. It’s so nice to be able to log onto an account and know you’re not going to get ripped off when you do the work…most of the time, anyway! I think some of the requesters are a little harsh in their rejections, but there’s no comeback. I guess that’s one way of getting us to do all those 1 cent hits – so we can build our acceptance rate back up. Turk is quite addictive, there’s no doubt about it. If you’d told me a couple of months ago that I’d be heading straight to the computer first thing in the morning to check on acceptances and see what’s new I’d have thought you were daft! There’s about $40 in the kitty right now. A long way from home, but gaining on it. It really is fun to watch the money accumulate, little by little. I’ve even opened another bank account to stop me from spending my Going Home Moolah It’s also been fun to join the Turker Nation and learn from other Turkers – amazing what you learn there. I hear the Bagpipes calling…
Children have this innocence that we can only dream of. The world will rob them of this in time and it will never return. In the sweetest voice earlier today, my two year old daughter asked me “daddy, where’s my mommy?” How do I respond to this, she was about a year old when everything happenend. I’m sure she has no recollection of that night since she was asleep and stayed asleep throughout the whole fight, when I ended up telling my wife to go (all she wanted were the keys to the car, so I gave them to her). We haven’t seen her since, I talked to her once a few months later and told her I still loved her and she told me to “f*** off” so that was the end of it. I didn’t answer the question when my daughter asked me today, before I could say anything…..I don’t know how long I was silent thinking about the ’right’ answer, when my son told her “mom is at the doctor to get better before she comes back”. Now I’m stuck with either letting it go or shattering his dreams of her returning, in the eyes of a four year old, he only recalls the good things. Sometimes when he acts up and gets punished he tells me he wants me to go away and then his mom can raise him. He asked me once a few months ago where she was and my answer was “I don’t know”. Just an honest answer because she dissappeared again and I have no idea where she is. It’s an odd feeling knowing that she knows where we are but dissappeared again, only leaving me wondering when or if I will ever hear from her again. So back to the innoence of children, do I tell them the whole truth, or do I leave them with that wonderful hope in their mind that she may return. If I shatter their dream now, what will be their reaction, how will it affect them in the future, and if I leave them with the hope will they resent me for not telling them the whole truth. My daughter made it all better later in the day when she told me “daddy, you’re my mommy”. It all became clear…
